admit of explanation, in the following pages.  But not on one page, nor even in a whole chapter, will the definition of drama be found, for pulsating life cannot be bound by words.  However, by applying the rules and heeding the suggestions herein contained, you will be able to understand the “why” of the drama that you feel when you witness it upon the stage.  The ability to think in drama means being able to see drama and bring it fresh and new and gripping to the stage.

Of course drama is nothing more than story presented by a different method than that employed in the short-story and the novel.  Yet the difference in methods is as great as the difference between painting and sculpture.  Indeed the novel-writer’s methods have always seemed to me analogous to those employed by the painter, and the dramatist’s methods similar to those used by the sculptor.  And I have marvelled at the nonchalant way in which the fiction writer often rushes into the writing of a play, when a painter would never think of trying to “sculpt” until he had learned at least some of the very different processes employed in the strange art-form of sculpture.  The radical difference between writing and playwrighting [1] has never been popularly understood, but some day it will be comprehended by everybody as clearly as by those whose business it is to make plays.

[1] Note the termination of the word playwright.  A “wright” is a workman in some mechanical business.  Webster’s dictionary says:  “Wright is used chiefly in compounds, as, figuratively, playwright.”  It is significant that the playwright is compelled to rely for nearly all his effects upon purely mechanical means.

An intimate knowledge of the stage itself is necessary for success in the writing of plays.  The dramatist must know precisely what means, such as scenery, sound-effects, and lights—­the hundred contributing elements of a purely mechanical nature at his command—­ he can employ to construct his play to mimic reality.  In the present commercial position of the stage such knowledge is absolutely necessary, or the writer may construct an act that cannot possibly win a production, because he has made use of scenes that are financially out of the question, even if they are artistically possible.

This is a fundamental knowledge that every person who would write for the stage must possess.  It ranks with the “a b c” course in the old common school education, and yet nearly every novice overlooks it in striving after the laurel wreaths of dramatic success that are impossible without it.  And, precisely in the degree that stage scenery is different from nature’s scenes, is the way people must talk upon the stage different from the way they talk on the street.  The method of stage speech—­what is said, not how it is said—­is best expressed in the definition of all art, which is summed up in the one word “suppression.”  Not what to put in, but what to leave out, is the knowledge the playwright—­in common with all other artists—­must possess.  The difference in methods between writing a novel and writing a play lies in the difference in the scenes and speeches that must be left out, as well as in the descriptions of scenery and moods of character that everyone knows cannot be expressed in a play by words.